Golden Pheasant and Flower of Japanese Quince, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu)
聚鳥畫譜 — 錦鶏と木瓜
by Numata Kashū
- Date:
- 1885
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 錦鶏と木瓜
by Numata Kashū
Golden Pheasant and Flower of Japanese Quince is one of the most vivid color plates in Numata Kashū's Shūchō gafu (1885), pairing the kinkeichō (golden pheasant, a Chinese species long acclimatized in East Asian gardens and prized for its extraordinary plumage) with the orange-red blossoms of boke (Japanese quince), a flowering shrub of late winter and early spring. The pairing exploits one of the great pictorial opportunities of kachō-e: a bird with brilliant gold, orange, and dark-green plumage set against a flowering plant whose blossoms run in a closely related color register, so that the entire composition becomes a meditation on the warm half of the spring palette. Kashū's drawing of the pheasant follows the long East Asian iconographic tradition that goes back to Song-dynasty bird painting, but with the kind of feather-structure observation that the Maruyama-Shijō shasei discipline had brought into Japanese painting practice. The plate is among the most-reproduced individual sheets from the album in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Dover and rawpixel editions, for understandable reasons: it is a virtuoso demonstration of what the high-end Tokyo color printing trade of 1885 could accomplish with multi-block registration.
聚鳥畫譜 — 鵯と柊
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 鵯と浜茄子
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 蒿雀と葦
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
聚鳥畫譜 — 鷲と荒海
1885
Color woodblock print from a book; ink and color on paper
Golden Pheasant and Flower of Japanese Quince, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu) (聚鳥畫譜 — 錦鶏と木瓜) was created by Numata Kashū (沼田荷舟) in 1885.
Golden Pheasant and Flower of Japanese Quince, from Pictorial Monograph of Birds (Shūchō gafu) depicts birds & flowers.
